Feeling Guilty About Sharing

I have to admit, I've held off on posting about our family's skiing day for a few reasons. Number one is that I am still quite tired and I want to do it justice... But secondly, is that I have a lot of guilt. Like majorly. Like that is something I am working on in therapy, but I feel guilty in general for living my life, but posts about vacation make me feel guilty, and posts about more expensive things on vacation even more so.

I don't want it seem to be like I'm flaunting things, like oh my gosh, look how awesome my life is, aren't you jealous of me, don't you want to be me? If my posts make people look on their life and say that it sucks, and makes it harder for them, I'd feel extra terrible. In fact, one friend of mine did mention that it was hard for her to see my vacation posts, and it's made me uncomfortable.

So why am I posting these posts anyhow? Why do I feel like it's the right thing to do?


Let me let you in on something.

When I was in the airport waiting for my flight back home, I saw quite a few other local families with their kids waiting for the flight home. I spoke to some of the families, and they told me about their vacations, what they did, and to be honest, the first thing that went through my head was envy. Envious of them that they can just come and bring their kids on vacation abroad whenever they want.

And then I realized just how ridiculous that was, because I was resentful of them for doing exactly what I was currently doing.

Emotions are weird things.

And then I remembered my tenth anniversary. When I was having such negative feelings because all my friends seemed to be having tenth anniversaries and all of them seemed to be celebrating by going abroad on vacation, and while we had a little bit of cash we could spend on our anniversary, we didn't have lots, and going abroad wasn't an option for us. I honestly considered leaving Facebook then, because everyone's posts were just making me too upset. Finally we decided to go on vacation within our country, and had a decent trip. But still nothing abroad, which was my true wish.

Then I learned about skyscanner and how I could get really cheap tickets, and then I started going abroad. Doors opened up to me, and I realized that I didn't need to have lots of extra cash to go abroad. And my trips abroad honestly have cost me less money on average than our trip within the country. (My first trip abroad I took, my airfare round trip cost less money than a one way taxi ride from the nearest city to my house.)

Suddenly, what I thought was impossible for me became my reality. And not because I all of a sudden became rich, but because I figured out how to do it on a budget! Often a very tight budget.

So these posts, as much as I am feeling guilty about posting them, because I don't want people to be jealous, I also want to open people's eyes to the fact that you can vacation without a lot of money. And, in fact, not only can you vacation abroad, it can often be cheaper than vacationing within my country. That is why I write what I do and how much it cost, to give you ideas on how to make such a vacation doable.

And then there are the more expensive things I do, like skiing. And I know that for some people that isn't currently doable no matter how much they try to save. But for other people there are choices people can make to make things doable. There was this family that I knew that went skiing with their kids abroad each winter, and I knew they were filthy rich and assumed you had to be that rich to even consider doing that. But on this trip, I realized that you don't have to be filthy rich or even rich at all, you just need to budget for it, and find cheaper places.

And that's the other reason I decided to go ahead with posting despite feeling guilty about doing so. I write about frugal things on my blog and sometimes extremely frugal things, things that others would never dream of doing because it's just not something they are comfortable doing for whatever reason. And that's ok.
However, my income is not so high. In fact, I am frugal by necessity. However, frugality is not something that needs to be worshiped, frugality for the sake of being frugal. My definition of frugality, as I've written about before, is spending less money on things that are not important to you, so that you have the money to spend it on things that are. To make sure my money gets spent in a way that reflects my values, budgeting it accordingly. And my values are not to have expensive groceries, to have lots of new clothing, to have a car, or to live in a large home. But my values are to travel and to make memories with my kids, and skiing with them definitely was way up there.

So while I do feel guilty about sharing about my trip, and especially the more expensive parts of it, I do think its important. Both to show that it can be possible, if done frugally. And to show what frugal living can accomplish.